Chapter Text
~*~*~
“Hey! Hey, Aang, take a look of this!”
Aang groaned as Tian pulled his hand away and pointed over the side of the bridge. Tian never said anything without punctuating it with a gesture, often in another person’s ribs, but despite the pain in his side, Aang looked.
What he saw were two men in Air Nomad clothes and tattoos walking toward the underpass. One of them, obviously a Yin, was so fat with child it seemed hard for him to stand. His Yang walked close by, his brows creased with worry, his shoulders hunched up as if ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.
“Woah,” Aang whispered. “Lovers. Why do you think they’re here?”
Tian shrugged. “Probably to have that baby, by the looks of it.”
The Yin suddenly let out a pained moan. Aang couldn’t hear much more from where he was, but the Yin’s distress seemed to throw the Yang into a panic. The Yang said something to which the Yin shook his head, but the Yang was persistent, and, after a few moments of negotiation, the two of them moved to a patch of grass on the side of the road. The Yin sat down. The Yang immediately crouched at the Yin’s feet and, after slipping off the Yin’s sandals, began massaging them.
Tian laughed at the sight of this.
“Hey, don’t do that,” Aang said. He rested his chin on his hands as he watched them. “It’s probably hard to be a Yang, having to wait on a Yin all the time and take care of him, and then after all that work the Yin can reject him after the baby comes.”
“Oh, people who are Yang don’t mind,” Tian yawned and folded his hands behind his head. “They’re more knots than brains anyway.”
“Tian, that’s not nice.”
“But it’s true. If we let Yang people up to their own devices they’d mate with anyone they’d see and never take care of their Yins. It would be chaos. It’s like that in the Fire Nation. The Yangs just knock Yins down on the street, mate with them whether they want it or not and then don’t even take care of them or the babies.”
Aang didn’t think that was true, but arguing with Tian when he was convinced of something, no matter how wrong, was like trying to clean the slime off an eel-toad. Today Aang didn’t have the patience. He watched as the Yang snuggled up behind his Yin and let his Yin’s head rest on his chest. Aang sighed, a part of him hopeful that he would feel happiness like that one day.
“Yep. The minute that baby’s out that Yang won’t care anymore,” Tian said with a snort. “That’s good. I’d like to have a lot Yangs. I think I’m going to want all of my children to be different. I want to have a lot, you know? Like a dozen. How about you? You’re a Yin, too, right?”
“Yeah,” Aang said. Most of the Air Nomads were, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when he found out. “I haven’t thought about kids, though.”
“Have you gone into heat?”
“Not yet, but the last few months I’ve gotten sick around the same time, so Gyatso says it’ll happen soon. I’ve been meditating.”
Tian shrugged. “You never know. You could be one of those perverts who aren’t either.”
“I do know,” Aang said bitterly.
“Okay.”
Aang scowled. Below them, the Yin was clumsily trying to stand. The attempt made the Yang frantic, and he fretted as the Yin found his wobbly feet.
Tian reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, half-crushed fruit pie.
“Tian, no.”
“Oh, come on.” Tian held up the pie. “You don’t think it would be fun to get a Yang annoyed?”
Aang sighed, but he was never one to pass up a good prank, so he readied the air-missile.
~*~*~
The Air Nomads had a deserved reputation for being patient and understanding in all things. But even the most tolerant monk couldn’t stand teaching young airbenders about sex.
Aang was not the most receptive pupil. All right, he admitted he planned to spend the majority of the class sitting in the back drawing sky bisons on his papyrus, but he’d heard the lecture before. He was taking the class with Monk Tashi not because he thought he needed it, but because Monk Gyatso had recommended a refresher before his first heat.
Anyway, he wasn’t as bad as the 10-year-olds who were hearing it for the first time.
“Silence!” Monk Tashi hissed for the third time in fifteen minutes.
The class quieted again, but some of the younger boys clearly had trouble holding it together. One kid couldn’t stop shaking and snorting while his slightly older brother elbowed him in the side.
“Now, if you’ve all had your fun,” Monk Tashi said in an imperious voice, “who can tell me where babies come from?”
About five kids in the front row raised their hands. The one who was picked delivered an “um”-filled mangling of the legend involving pelican eggs for three minutes before the monk couldn’t take it anymore and interrupted him.
“Many of the animals that roam the earth today are not the same as the animals that were alive a millennia ago. Fish from the sea joined with the birds from the air. Animals in the most verdant forests became one with animals that lived among fiery volcanoes. They are the result of many, many years of fusion, and we humans are no exception.”
Aang let out a yawn that was louder than he thought. Monk Tashi glared at him, and he tried to smile as widely as he could.
Monk Tashi sighed and continued, “Humans may be the most similar to apes, but in our mating we are more like dogs.”
“Hee-hee, mating!” giggled a boy in the first row.
“We mate like wolves! Awooooooo!” shrieked another boy in the second.
“Be quiet! As I was saying, in addition to being like dogs, we also share a common thread with sea creatures that can be both male and female, or have the traits of one while appearing to be the other. Yes, Chin?”
“Then why aren’t we called MonkeyFishDogs?” the boy from the second row asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Can I call us MonkeyFishDogs?”
“No.”
An 11-year-old sitting two seats down from Chin snickered loudly “Chin’s a MonkeyFishDog because he is uuuuugly!”
“Silence!” Monk Tashi yelled. A blast of wind rushed through the classroom so suddenly Aang’s papyrus was almost ripped out of his hand. The rest of the boys sat up straight and quiet.
“Now then, some believe that our ancestors may have been more like other monkeys. Once all men were like Yang, once all women were like Yin. Some cultures, notably the Northern Water Tribe, favor a return to such a state. But this is not who we are. Our sisters in the Eastern and Western Air temples can be Yin and Yang just as we men in the Southern and Northern temples. Now,” Monk Tashi exhaled deeply, as if readying himself for something unpleasant, “I will show you pictures of a male Yin and Yang.”
As expected, the class degraded into laughter and hooting as Monk Tashi unrolled the wall scrolls. Aang couldn’t help laughing a bit himself this time. The pictures were clinical, but that seemed to heighten the embarrassment of seeing them rather than induce detachment. The top two pictures showed a Yin male from the front and back, his lower body drawn to include his internal and external organs: the knot-less vestigial penis, the anus, the heat and lubrication glands, the internal womb. The kids seemed to snicker at every word, and as Monk Tashi moved on to the Yang male, pointed out the engorged penis and the knot, they’d lost it.
Aang zoned out almost completely at this point. Somehow Monk Tashi made it through the diagrams of the female Yin and Yang, but they weren’t much different from each other. The Yin female had a larger womb connected to her vagina instead of her anus that included the heat and lubrication glands. The Yang female had a vagina as well, but this one had no glands and her clitoris, which was connected to a prostate, had the capacity to grow to about the size of a Yin male’s.
This wasn’t really helping, Aang thought. It had been almost a month since he last got sick, and he was more worried about how the heat would feel than anything else. It occurred to him that the monks never talked much about that. Sure, they said if you didn’t meditate you’d be mindless and uncontrollable, but nothing about the experience of being uncontrolled. They told you how sex worked, how babies were made, what could go wrong, but nothing about how it felt and how to deal with that. It didn’t seem to make a lot of sense.
“So,” Monk Tashi said. “Any questions?”
About fifteen different hands went up.
Monk Tashi shuddered and glowered at a boy frantically waving his arms. “Yes, you.”
“If Yangs' penises are that big, how much do they pee?”
Monk Tashi sighed. “It doesn’t look like that normally. It grows when the Yang is ready to make a baby. I explained this. They go to the bathroom just like Yins.”
“What if they have to pee when it’s big like that?” asked another boy. “Will the pee get stuck in the knot?”
“No. That is disgusting. Does anyone have a real question?”
“Has a boy Yin ever thought they were having a baby but really just had to poop?” asked one child.
“Can one of those in-between people make themselves pregnant?” asked another.
“Somebody told me that when waterbenders like each other they can bend the stuff that comes out of your butt and throw it in the other person’s face! Is that true?”
The last question came from the kid sitting next to Aang and Aang, like everyone else in the room, could only look at him with a mixture of revulsion and horror. This lasted about five seconds. Then Aang began to giggle. Then he began to laugh. Then everyone else did.
“That. Is. It!” Monk Tashi yelled.
Another blast of wind rocketed through the room. It was enough to knock a few of the younger kids in the front row over, but that only made everyone laugh harder.
“Stop laughing! You’re revolting,” Monk Tashi was fuming now, stomping his feet and shaking his fists. Aang had never seen him this angry. “This is the next generation of spiritual leaders? This pack of hyena-boars that can’t take the creation of life seriously? That ask about such perverted rumors and practices that they shouldn’t even know? It would be better if the Air Nomads were wiped from the face of the earth! You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”
Aang felt his stomach drop and he wasn’t sure why. Monk Tashi had always been the most tightly-wound and conservative of the monks, and he guessed the class had been more out of control than usual. Still, this seemed extreme, even for him.
“Out! All of you, out! And if I see any of you on gliders today you’ll be back in here for punishment.”
The class, Aang included, erupted in a round of disappointed “Awws.”
“Out!” Monk Tashi repeated.
Aang sighed as he prepared to file out with the class. He hoped flying on Appa wasn’t included in the “no gliders” rule. As he started to walk out the door, Monk Tashi grasped him on the shoulder.
“I’m especially disappointed in you, Aang.”
“What?” Aang exclaimed. “I didn’t do anything!”
“You encouraged them. More than that, you sat in the back of the class not paying attention or setting a good example. You’ll be a man in a few years. It’s time to start acting like it!”
Aang made his way back to his cell in a cloud of anger. He wasn’t the only 12-year-old in the class. He wasn’t the only one who’d been laughing or bored. He’d been singled out for some reason, and he didn’t know why, but knew that it wasn’t fair.
The anger had mellowed into aggravation by the time he got to his bed and laid on top of the covers. Maybe his heat would come tomorrow and he wouldn’t have to listen to Monk Tashi talk about it again. Yeah. That would be nice. That would solve a lot of his problems.
Except for the part where he still didn’t know what would happen. Or when. Or how bad it would be.
Aang sighed and stared at the ceiling, thinking and worrying until he fell asleep.
~*~*~
The most surprising part of the heat was that for the first few hours, Aang didn’t even know it was happening.
Aang had come down to breakfast a few days after his disastrous class with Monk Tashi, and he’d only gotten a few bites of congee down before one of the few older Yang monks walked by, took a large sniff of him, then suddenly ran away.
Monk Gyatso was at Aang’s side within moments.
“Is this really it?” Aang asked as Monk Gyatso led him through the temple to one of the isolation cells. “I don’t even feel sick. Is something wrong with me?”
“No, Aang. It’s common for a Yang to be able to smell a Yin is ready for heat before the Yin knows it.”
Aang groaned. “There’s so much I don’t know. I think I just want this to be over with.”
“Have patience, boy.”
The cell was sparse, equipped with only a white-sheeted bed; a lit, long-burning candle; a large metal tub of water; towels and another sheet to be used for a tunic.
“You should change and begin to meditate as soon as possible,” Monk Gyatso said. “Someone will come by every few hours or so to check on you until it’s over.”
“Sounds good,” Aang muttered.
Monk Gyatso smiled. “Try to be happy, Aang. You’re growing up. This is an auspicious day.”
Aang looked around the room as Monk Gyatso closed the door. “An auspicious day spent locked in a cell away from everyone and trying not to go crazy … right.”
After changing into the tunic, Aang sat on the bed with his legs crossed. He’d been trained in meditation for so long that going into a trance was like breathing. It wasn’t too long before he felt himself in that familiar airy, floaty place. He enjoyed it, and it girded him for whatever was to come.
~*~*~
It began as a warm sickness from somewhere far away. At first it was small, just a minor distraction, but then it increasingly became more insistent. There was an ache, an itch, deep inside him, something that threatened to fling him back into the real world through the force of its hunger.
Aang was almost curious enough to let it, but the fear of waking up alone and out of his mind made him pull back.
It was difficult, though. Even in his meditative haze he could feel the physical changes happening to him, could feel his penis get hard and the wetness oozing out of him. Aang moaned, and even though he knew he was using the full force of his lungs, he could barely hear it.
This was bad. He had to go deeper. Aang thought of the mantra Gyatso had taught him: “I am more than a Yin. I am more than my body.” He repeated it in his mind again and again, repeated it until he knew nothing but those words.
Then something happened.
~*~*~
The need. The need was the first thing Aang registered, first thing he could register. It was so powerful he could barely think of anything else.
“Help …” Aang felt his knees buckle beneath him as he fell on his hands into the snow. Oh gods, he needed to mate. He needed it more than air. “Someone help me, please!”
Aang heard the sound of someone panting off in the distance. He looked up and saw a woman running through the snow. She was absolutely beautiful. Her long hair fell in waves over her Water Tribe clothes and Aang had the urge to fling himself at her, but he couldn’t move.
The woman stumbled, and a burly Water Tribe man ran up behind her. Immediately upon seeing him Aang felt the man was familiar and knew he was a Yang.
“Don’t you run from me!” the man bellowed. “We know this is what you want.”
Aang shuddered. He could feel the man’s hunger for the woman.
“Kuruk,” the woman moaned. “Kuruk, don’t be mad. I just wanted to be far away from everyone else.”
The woman started to remove her clothes, but Kuruk pounced on her. It all seemed to happen so fast. Kuruk’s desire for her was overwhelming. He felt an unbearable need to make the woman his and his alone, would fight to the death anyone else who tried to touch her. He released his knot inside her, and wanted to keep her on it forever.
Aang felt something burst inside of him, and then it all went away.
~*~*~
“Who among you would bear the child of Kyoshi?”
The woman who spoke had a painted face and was as tall as a giant. She seemed like a god as she stepped down from the dais and into the small group of women who had crowded around it on their hands and knees, crawling along the wooden floor. The women were young and muscular, clearly powerful but they were still Yin, and as Kyoshi passed by they kissed her feet and buried their faces in her skirt.
Aang sat on the wooden floor as well, away from the women in their collective haze of heat. There were other Yang women in the room too. They watched the proceedings with fascination, and Aang realized that whoever Kyoshi didn’t pick would be theirs.
Kyoshi let the Yins beg and plead, listened to one after another claim that they were the prettiest, the bravest, the smartest, and that if Kyoshi just took pity on them they could give her a child as pretty, as brave, as smart as they were. Aang could smell each one of them as Kyoshi did, could feel her pride swell as she sized each one of them up, knowing any of them were hers for the taking.
She finally chose one, a muscular girl with light hair and darker eyes. “You,” she said, pointing a golden fan at her.
“Master Kyoshi!” The woman leaped into Kyoshi’s arms, clasping Kyoshi around her shoulders with her arms and around Kyoshi’s waist with her legs. They kissed, and to Aang it felt like a drink after being thirsty forever, like a treat for a job well done, like everything good.
Kyoshi lowered her choice to the floor, and the Yangs swarmed around her to pick up the others. Some dove directly for a specific woman, while others waited until a Yin presented herself to them. A fight broke out briefly between two of the Yangs over one girl, but another pushed between them and settled it. To Kyoshi this only barely registered, was part of the overall atmosphere that made her want to consume the girl. Though why should she consider this destruction, Kyoshi thought as she entered into her chosen lover. Wasn’t this the creation of all life?
Aang cried out in pleasure when Kyoshi did, then it all disappeared once again.
~*~*~
The visions kept coming: an Air Nomad woman baring her neck to a trembling, eager male Yang in the courtyard of an upside-down air temple; an Earth Kingdom boy eagerly receiving his first kiss and not knowing whether he should surrender or push the older woman to the ground and claim her; a young Water Tribe woman in a city of metal and bricks biting a black-haired youth on the shoulder until he begged for her clit.
The last vision was in an opulent room decorated with red tapestries and gold statues. Aang knew he must be in the Fire Nation. It was a Yin this time, a young man with hair down to his back and a long nose that offset his kind smile. He was bent nearly double under the Yang. Even though his Yang was smaller than him, he was handsome. He radiated a power that the Yin – and Aang – found so irresistible as to be almost shameful. Aang wanted to give everything ever to this man and somehow suspected that would be the worst thing he could ever do.
“Do you like it?” the Yang asked.
“Yes,” the Yin responded. “Oh yes, of course.”
“Then let me knot in you, Roku. This can’t be enough. You have to want children. You have to have the urge. I can fix it.”
“No, Sozin.”
Sozin’s face reddened at the response. He grabbed Roku’s face with both hands and kissed him fiercely, thrusting into him again and again, stretching him, filling him. It felt so wonderful. Aang could tell Roku wanted to completely let go, let the man knot in him and breed him. And yet, he didn’t. Roku somehow was able to close his eyes and let the sensations roll over him until he came.
This time, though, Aang didn’t find himself somewhere else. The scene melted away but Roku still stood before him. Only this time he was old, his long hair and beard as white as snow.
“How do you do it?” Aang asked. “There’s so much at stake. There’s so much need involved. How do you not hurt others? How do you not get hurt? How can anyone ever balance it all without going insane?”
“Little one,” Roku said, “That’s what love is.”
~*~*~
The cell was full of shadows and the moon was up when Aang awakened. Despite meditating for hours he felt exhausted. His legs ached like he’d been running for miles, and Aang winced as he uncrossed them. As he shifted, his body touched against something wet and viscous. Aang saw the sheets had been drenched in his fluids. Curious, he pressed his fingers into it and brought some up to his nose. It didn’t smell like anything to him, but he still couldn’t imagine flinging it in someone’s face.
“Ew,” he decided, and wiped his fingers off on the sheets again.
Aang took off the tunic and slid into the tub. He tried to process what he had seen, wondered who those people were, but so many of them were already fading. He closed his eyes and splashed some water in his face.
“So, I’m an adult now,” Aang said to himself, but he couldn’t figure out what that meant either.
~*~*~
“Well, you should be proud of yourself,” Monk Gyatso told him later as they were eating breakfast. (They’d had a large spread in front of them. Aang hadn’t realized how hungry he was until later, but when the hunger made itself known, it was ugly.) “Most young people don’t make it through their first heats without waking up in the middle.”
“Thanks,” Aang said, chewing through a large mouthful of rice. “It was kind of difficult. When the visions started coming that made it a little easier, though.”
“Visions?” Monk Gyatso put down his own rice and chopsticks. “What sort of visions?”
Aang could feel his face turn red, but after some prodding, he told Monk Gyatso everything he remembered, trying to explain the grosser parts without going into too much detail. Monk Gyatso listened with his hands folded in front of his face, not saying anything. As Aang talked more and more, he got the impression that whatever he had seen, it wasn’t something normal.
“Thank you for telling me, Aang,” Gyatso said. He stood up with a sigh. “There’s something I need to discuss with the elders. Finish your food. I’ll be back later.”
Aang’s eyes followed Gyatso as he walked away. After a moment, Aang lifted some rice to his mouth, trying to eat over his growing dread.
End Part One.